Arsenal must seize the opportunity to avoid falling further behind the Premier League elite

David Dein, when he was still vice-chairman of Arsenal, was dismissive of the
threat posed by Chelsea’s new owner. He once famously said: “Roman
Abramovich has parked his Russian tanks on our lawn and is firing £50 notes
at us.”

Pressure: Stan Kroenke (right) may face a world-record bid for his shares in ArsenalPhoto: GETTY IMAGES

That was in August 2003, a couple of months after Abramovich had acquired Chelsea. At the time Arsenal and Dein felt so emboldened that when the Russian’s advisers offered £50 million for Thierry Henry he dismissed the bid without even taking it to the club’s board.

The landscape of football has changed, and changed forever. Arsenal were ‘The Invincibles’ back in 2003-04, with Chelsea second, and manager Arsène Wenger claimed in those days that there were only so many players that Abramovich’s money could buy.

Well, Arsenal have not won a Premier League title since. They have not even come close. No trophy of any description has been won since the FA Cup in 2005.

Wenger has done brilliantly to keep Arsenal in the Champions League year after year, while the most impressive new club stadium in England has been built. But even Wenger’s most fervent supporters would struggle to claim that the team is any closer to winning a title again.

As exclusiely revealed in Telegraph Sport, a Middle-East consortium is poised to make a £1.5 billion takeover bid for Arsenal within the next few weeks.

It would transform the landscape once again. One of the words Wenger has used most regularly, and which has irked Arsenal’s supporters, has been “potential”.

But here would be the financial muscle that could, in one move, make Arsenal among the wealthiest — possibly even the wealthiest — club in the Premier League and immediately competitive with the Manchester clubs and Chelsea.

The likelihood is that the bid will be rejected by Arsenal’s majority owner Stan Kroenke who has been consistent in stating that he and his son Josh are in it for the long-haul.

That could provoke an angry reaction from Arsenal supporters, many of whom have grown frustrated as they have seen the team become less competitive. And that anger will grow if Arsenal finish outside the top four this season.

At times during this campaign it has appeared that Arsenal have reached a tipping point with the anger largely aimed at Kroenke, an infrequent visitor. Arsenal’s other significant shareholder, the Uzbek billionaire Alisher Usmanov, has been shut out by the American.

It is easy to see why Arsenal are an attractive prospect for potential investors given the infrastructure, the location, the heritage, the fan-base and, in fairness to Wenger, the undoubted potential that exists. And it appears that the prospective bidders have not only recognised all of this but are prepared to pay top dollar for it.

Many fans will be nervous — not least because the bidders do not want to make their identities public – but the scale of the prospective offer suggests they are serious players.

With Kroenke, Arsenal have already gone down the foreign ownership route so the debate about another big club falling in to foreign hands is immaterial. That has already happened. With luck it will come down to what is in the best interests of Arsenal and the fans.